2.2.13.1 Performance Counter Provider

Each performance counter provider that exposes performance data with the Performance Counter subsystem defines a logical provider entity. This logical entity, which is identified by a PLA-UID, is registered with the Performance Counter subsystem and enables the subsystem to identify the data provider.

Performance counters that are exposed by a performance counter provider are grouped into logical entities called counter sets. A counter set is a collection of related performance counters and is uniquely identified by a PLA-UID; each performance counter is identified by an integer identifier that is unique within the counter set. There might be multiple instances of a single counter set. For example, the disk performance provider can choose to expose read performance metrics, such as the number of disk reads per second, of different physical disks with different instances of the physical disk counter set.<11>